A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is a most pleasant film that lets
the audience see a live performance of the radio
show, has a little bit of plot and some nice
dialog, but not much extraordinary. It is just
a restful interlude, and perhaps that is enough.
Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
Everything about A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION seems to run against the tide. It is a film based on an internationally popular radio show. How many films have been based on radio shows since the 1940s? How many popular radio shows are there any more? And how many of current radio shows have a feel of old-fashioned, down- home values? And how much do we see of old-fashioned values in a film? I almost want to rate this film highly just for the sheer audacity of its lacking any sort of audacity. For those who did not already know the radio show is the brainchild of American humorist and performance artist Garrison Keillor, a tall, beefy man with docile boxer-dog looks. It is hard to apply such a modish label as "performance artist" to such a folksy, soft- spoken man, but that is really what he is.
It probably is not fair to penalize the film A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION because the radio program it is based on is good. But the truth is that most of the entertainment value of the film is just seeing an episode of the radio program, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, done on film. Still, one wants there to be more value here than there is of just listening to the radio program. Indeed there is, but it is not enough to justify the price of a movie ticket. What else do you get? You get to see some of how an episode is performed, and many of the faces you see are the real people who produce the show. You get some dialog spoken by good actors like Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, and Tommy Lee Jones. The dialog is reasonably well written, with a script by Keillor that has some okay character development. You get the lightest soupcon of a story.
The story is that this is the very last performance of A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. The big money interests from Texas actually own the show and have decided that they want to end the show's thirty-year-run. Everybody in the cast is under the cloud of knowing this is the last time they will have the pleasure of getting up and doing the show. Only the host, G.K. (Garrison Keillor), seems unfazed by the finality. But still the production of the show is just getting some people together to have a good time, and somehow the show gets made. In that regard the production of the show is like the production of the films of the films of Robert Altman, who just happens to be the director of this film.
The film plays a little with the show. Guy Noir (played by Kevin Kline), who in this story is a real person rather than a weekly character, is the security man for the program. He knows there is something strange going on at the set. There is a mysterious beautiful woman (Virginia Madsen) in a white raincoat roaming around. He knows she should not be there, but does not know what she wants.
Most of the film takes place during the performance of the program. The camera is on the stage during the humor sections and its attention wanders away during the musical sections, which is more or less how most people experience the radio program. The viewer often wanders into the middle of conversations in progress and wanders out before they are done. We listen in on the backstage conversations of Guy Noir and the singing sisters Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson (Tomlin and Streep). There are two bad-boy cowboys, Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly). Yolanda has brought her daughter, Lola (Lindsey Lohan), a singer and poet who for no apparent reason is fixated on suicide. All the characters talk little like Keillor. Many of the functionaries putting on the broadcast are the real people from the radio show.
The movie is a lot like everything Keillor does, reliable and pleasant, but nothing very exciting or even remarkable. It is the cinematic equivalent of a dish of vanilla ice cream. Keillor and Altman give us just 105 minutes of quiet pleasure. I rate A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10. Incidentally, conspicuously absent is the "News from Lake Woebegon" section, really the centerpiece of the radio show.
Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2006 Mark R. Leeper
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